Taxi - 出租車, 計程車 or 打的

[Christa]

Another "what do they say where you are?" kind of question.

 

I've heard more than one way over the years for saying "taxi" in Chinese.

 

The three I've heard are: 出租車 (chūzūchē), 計程車 (jìchéngchē) and 打的 (dǎdi).

 

So, I'm wondering, which have you heard said / do you recognise / understand?

 

 

 

Christina (the supreme vegetable non-expert)

[889]

的士。

[somethingfunny]

的士 is a Hong Kong thing I believe.  I certainly never heard it on the mainland.

 

I've also never come across 計程車.

 

I think you may be confusing nouns and verbs here. 

 

Generally, 出租車 is used to mean "taxi".

 

For "take/get a taxi" then 打车 is the most frequently used, although in some areas 打的 is also used.  Although I've always heard it as 打个的, although that's not to say that both aren't acceptable.

 

If you think about it, you mostly talk about taxis when saying "get a taxi", so you're much more likely to hear  打车 than 出租車.

[889]

I think 的士 is used in parts of the S Mainland as well as Hong Kong. In any event the common expression throughout the Mainland, 打个的 !, is derived from it.

[Shelley]

30 minutes ago, somethingfunny said:

 出租車

According to my sources (the dictionary of Perapera) it is Taiwanese for "rental car" which I take to mean a self drive situation.

[Tomsima]

a relatively new word you will hear nowadays is 滴滴 , I've heard it being used as both a noun and a verb, as in 你滴滴過來比較方便, though I might be missing some implicit unspoken words here. it isn't exactly equivalent to taxi, but as in an 'uber car' so to speak. also 的士 does get used where I am (湖北) by younger people. most people just use 車 and rely on context to be honest. only people I've heard using 出租車 are people when talking to foreigners about taxis

[somethingfunny]

I think that might come from the company 滴滴打车.  

 

I once had a colleague who referred to going by car as "di di menr menr".  No idea what the characters were supposed to be, and they claimed it was the sound made by a car - something about the horns I recall.

[dwq]

的士 is 粵語音譯 of Taxi and is used in Hong Kong and southern China.

出租車 is used in mainland China.

計程車 is used in Taiwan.

 

The Wikipedia article has all these and more.

 

[Christa]

1 hour ago, dwq said:

的士 is used in Hong Kong and southern China.

出租車 is used in mainland China.

計程車 is used in Taiwan.

 

Yes, this is roughly how I understood it too.

 

I think that if you use 出租車 in Taiwan it means a rental car and, if you use 計程車 in the mainland, then it means rental car, rather than taxi, as it does in Taiwan.

[dwq]

計程車 literally means "cars by distance", so I doubt it is used for rental car (which is rented per day / hour mostly).  The reverse, using 出租車 (cars for rent) in Taiwan might work as pointed out by Shelly.

 

It seems rental car companies call themselves XX租車 in the mainland, e.g. AVIS .

 

[studychinese]

出租車 for certain. At least in mainland China.

[陳德聰]

Pretty sure this trio is one of the standard examples where Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China have completely different terms for the same thing.

 

I seem to recall we have a thread full of different words for the same thing...

 

Edit: Found it! @Christa I suspect you would enjoy it

https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/25133-same-thing-different-names/

[Christa]

5 hours ago, 陳德聰 said:

Pretty sure this trio is one of the standard examples where Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China have completely different terms for the same thing.

 

I seem to recall we have a thread full of different words for the same thing...

 

Edit: Found it! @Christa I suspect you would enjoy it

https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/25133-same-thing-different-names/

 

Oh my goodness, you have found my obsessive compulsive Chinese varieties heaven...

[DavyJonesLocker]

Or nowadays  滴滴